A New Word
by HoldoutTrout
Summary: New to the genre, this story is pure fluff and takes place late first season or second season. A small moment between Aeryn and John. Aeryn musing. Oneshot.


**A New Word**

By Hold-Out Trout

Disclaimer: On a site like FFN, are these really necessary? Everyone here knows the people who write these things don't own anything. Same with me. I do not own Farscape.

Author's Note: Okay, I'm not entirely happy with this piece, but I think it's kind of cute. It's pretty much pure mush. You have been warned. Oh, and this is set kind of early. Probably late first or second season.

* * *

Before I came aboard Moya, I thought I'd seen everything worth seeing, done everything worth doing.

Just shows you how limited my life really was.

At first, I failed to understand just how my life had expanded. I saw only that my options had narrowed past the point of recovery: I could run, or I could die. If I turned back, even briefly, I saw my own death waiting for me. The longer I ran, the more reason I had to run. The friends I'd made, the places I'd seen, and, eventually, the sense of my own worth, made me _want_ to make it through each struggle.

I think John understood the freedom of the situation right away--or if not right away, a whole heck of a lot sooner than I did. He had set out to test his boundaries, his people's limits, and he had succeeded, albeit in a different way than he'd intended.

John infected me with that sense of adventure sooner than I let on. He saw everything old and familiar to me as new, exciting, sometimes dangerous, and always full of hope. Every new planet was a new chance to find a way home, of course, but it was also an end in itself. The first time we went on-planet, when I was still the Peacekeeper doing her duty, I remember him standing in the middle of everything--in the middle of the frelling _street_--just gaping at the most common things imaginable. It wasn't just as if he saw the world in different shades of color--his entire spectrum was shifted in subtle but dramatic ways. Where I saw tedium, he saw peace, and where I saw honor and duty, he saw lies and power-struggles.

I wonder if my thoughts were corrupted so quickly because my training was defective or because it was simply wrong. I know which way I think most of the time. Okay, pretty much _all_ of the time, except when John does something stupid and I'm so angry with him I could push him out of the frelling airlock. There are moments when my Peacekeeper training makes perfect sense.

These moments are more than outweighed by what I now consider ordinary days: days spent running around the galaxy, avoiding or fighting various enemies--after us for who knows what reason--, repairing parts that were damaged in the last engagement, and generally being confused and worried out of my mind. In all that, I find my life to be rather...fun. Or at least interesting.

John and I had a conversation the other day, while we were working in the maintenance bay, trying to pretend we weren't bored to death. He started it, as usual.

"So, you ever gonna admit you like it here?"

"I don't like it here." We both knew I was lying. It was the habit that was important.

"Sure. Whatever keeps the _int'welas_ at bay." I'm pretty sure the translator microbes didn't get that one right, because the idea of int'welas...well, I actually laughed at that one.

And then I tried to _explain_ what was so funny.

By the time we'd both given up, we were incapacitated by laughter and had thoroughly confused Chiana and Rygel. It took several microts to stop laughing, and John and I were both sitting on the floor, not quite all the way across the room from one another. Suddenly the whole feeling in the room shifted, and neither of us was laughing, but just looking at each other.

I thought about all these things, and about the other moments just like this one, moments where nothing in the universe mattered except that we were there, together. I wondered why those moments always have to end.

Not two seconds later, we were interrupted by Chiana again, wanting to know if we were finished making asses of ourselves because Zhan had something she wanted to get our opinion on.

John and I got up, John sighing audibly. We headed for the door, Chiana leading the way, John putting something away by the door. I don't know what possessed me, but as I passed him, I touched his shoulder. It was a small touch, but I felt his reaction all through my body--all his muscles tensed, and I knew, as if I hadn't already, that he had the same reaction to me that I did to him.

That's one freedom I still have to get used to. I'm in no hurry, not yet, but I think it might already be too late to avoid the end result of our dance, the feeling I now have a word for, thanks to John:

Love.


End file.
